The present disclosure relates to a method of joint planning and control of a mobile robot.
Mobile robots in related art have the ability to move from one location to another and are not fixed to any one particular location. They are used in a variety of applications to assist or replace humans in performing repetitive or dangerous tasks. They may be configured with different sizes and shapes in order to reach and perform tasks in areas that would otherwise be too small or too large for humans to access. Additionally, mobile robots may be configured to withstand harsh environments that would be too extreme for human beings.
Mobile robots in related art may be configured with different vehicle propulsion mechanisms including wheels, tank treads, tracks, guides, etc. The mobile robots may be manually controlled by an operator to adjust the speed and direction of the robot. Alternatively, the mobile robots may be programmed to follow a set route or pre-specified markers.
More recently, mobile robots in related art may be controlled autonomously. Such robots take into account changing surroundings in order to avoid unknown or unforeseen obstacles or external influences. These robots may include a variety of sensors to detect surrounding landscape and obstacles.
The mobile robots may include electronic hardware to receive inputs and to send outputs to move the robot from one location to another location. The inputs may be sent to the electronic hardware via a wired or a wireless connection. The outputs sent by the electronic hardware may then be used to adjust a position or a direction of the mobile robot.
While there are various sources of guidance (i.e. knowing which direction to move the mobile robot) such as manual operation via a joystick or via an artificial intelligence module, mobile robots in related art are only designed to work with a single type of source of guidance to convert a desired direction of motion into instructions that are then transmitted to wheels of the robot.
Existing actuation techniques in related art do not yield a well-behaved actuation signal, which can lead to sudden changes in wheel velocity and even an instant reversal of wheel rotation. Additionally, existing actuation techniques are generally sensitive to saturation, noise, and uncertainties. As a result, most existing actuation techniques are quite involved and difficult to tune. Moreover, most existing actuation techniques are designed to work only with a specific type of robot.
Examples of an existing actuation technique may include minimizing cost functional or stochastic optimization. Such techniques require more involved mathematical operations and therefore require more expensive and complex processors to implement.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the above mentioned problems and limitations by providing a method of joint planning and control that can work with multiple types of sources of guidance, that is dynamically friendly and can produce smooth wheel rotation, that can be used with different types of robot (i.e. car-like robots, differential drive robots, etc.), and that is robust against saturation, noise, and parameter uncertainties.